The present invention relates to electrical measurements and, in particular, to networked test instruments.
The electrical testing of devices under test (DUTs) such as semiconductors, integrated circuits, circuit boards and finished devices is an important part of the manufacturing of such goods.
Significant time (and expense) is expended to set up and perform tests of electrical parameters such as those related to performance and reliability. The tests themselves may take significant time resources and configuring the test systems in preparation for testing can also be very significant. This may be particularly true in an environment where the type of DUT is changed often, requiring the both the test equipment configuration and the tests to be performed to be changed.
The efficiency of the testing of DUTs may be improved by speeding up the setup process and the testing itself. Test instruments have been networked to provide better control over the configuration and testing processes and efforts have been made to increase the number of tests performed in overlapping time periods (i.e., in parallel).